Pharmaceutical Counterfeiting
The pharmaceutical industry is large, and it has continued to grow steadily with worldwide sales reaching US$400 billion in 2002. Around 20% of gross sales revenues are spent on R&D. The industry is also global, and its security structure is largely the result of the need to protect massive R&D investments. Many Governments are large buyers of pharmaceuticals in publicly-financed health care systems.
Pharmaceutical expenditure now represents about 15% of total health expenditure in Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) nations. While trade and manufacturing activities are operating at an international level, national authorities take into account the position of their country within a global perspective when designing their national policies. There is also a need to balance global industry interests with concerns for public health and safety.
In this environment there is a need to improve security of the pharmaceutical supply chain through:                Global trade regulation through International Trade Agreements (ITAs),        Protection of R&D expenditure through patent activity, and        Concerns for public health and safety.        
Global trade is regulated through ITAs and involves many public agencies pursuing multiple goals that relate to public health, industry and trade regulation, and security policies. The World Trade Organization (WTO) is therefore just one of the many organizations providing agreements of specific interest to the pharmaceutical industry.
The following Agreements highlight some of the WTO's key trade requirements now influencing the way the pharmaceutical industry is organized.
Agreement on Rules of Origin: The rules of origin are the criteria needed to determine the national origin of a product, and they are necessary because goods may be subject to different discriminatory measures depending on their origin. Rules of origin are the criteria needed to determine:                What imported products will receive most-favored nation treatment or preferential treatment,        When to implement measures and instruments of commercial policy such as anti-dumping duties and safeguard measures,        Trade statistics,        Labeling and ticketing requirements, and        Procedures for government procurement.        
Agreement on Import Licensing Procedures: The agreement on import licensing procedures requires governments to publish sufficient information for traders to know how and why the licenses are granted. It also describes how countries should notify the WTO when they introduce new import licensing procedures, or change existing procedures.
Preshipment Inspection Agreement: The obligations that apply to governments which use preshipment inspections include:                Non-discrimination,        Transparency,        Protection of confidential business information,        Avoiding unreasonable delay,        The use of specific guidelines for conducting price verification, and        Avoiding conflicts of interest by the inspection agencies.        
Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, Including Trade in Counterfeit Goods: The agreement recognizes that widely varying standards in the protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights. The lack of a multilateral framework of principles, rules and disciplines dealing with international trade in counterfeit goods has been a growing source of tension in international economic relations.
The above WTO provisions are just a few of the wide range of statutory and regulatory requirements now governing the international and domestic trade behaviour of the pharmaceutical industry. They also highlight the impending regulatory and statutory pressures likely to mandate the use of unique item identification.
An additional area that has always been of particular concern to the International AntiCounterfeiting Coalition (IACC) is the increasing availability of counterfeit products that have caused and continue to present threats to public health and safety. Given the heightened awareness of the past two years, the IACC's concerns with respect to public health and safety risk, have only increased. WHO estimates that counterfeit drugs account for ten percent of all pharmaceuticals, and of these 16% contain the wrong ingredients, with 60% having no active ingredients at all. That proportion of counterfeit drugs can rise to as high as 60% in developing countries.
In addition to using the pharmaceutical industry as a means to raise funds, the potential exists for terrorists to use the commission of the crime itself as a means of attack, for example by shipping counterfeit product containing deadly biotoxins. The United States Congress recognizes the increasing role of organized crime and terrorist activity in the theft of intellectual property through Trademark misuse and drug counterfeiting, and the threat that these pose for public health and safety. Proceeds are often used to fund more violent activities. The IACC have been tracking the influx of terrorist organizations into criminal and counterfeiting and there is now ample evidence to suggest that links exist.
It should also be noted here, that there is a significant overlap between security concerns and issues raised by the need to strengthen brand protection. It is simply not possible for the pharmaceutical industry to effectively address all of the security and brand protection concerns raised without adopting an automated unique item identification process to improve drug authentication, and to be able to actively monitor the physical flow of goods from its source to the customer.
In view of pressures for the pharmaceutical industry to address security and brand protection concerns, it becomes necessary to consider the adoption of new technologies. The two key capabilities required to improve overall efficiency and to protect the supply chain, are track and trace and product authentication.
While there are some compelling arguments supporting the introduction of track and trace, and product authentication solutions, there are also complexities that need to be addressed.
Two fundamental goals of the pharmaceutical industry are consumer care and public safety. To achieve these goals in the United States, the FDA and individual states regulate the industry through laws and administrative orders designed to protect the integrity of drugs throughout the pharmaceutical supply chain. Implicit in the laws is the administrative requirement for drug authentication and the ability to do track and trace.
Track and trace forms the foundation for improved patient safety by giving manufacturers, distributors and pharmacies a systemic method to detect and control counterfeiting, drug diversions and mishandling.
The introduction of track and trace capabilities also introduces the concept of a pedigree. Florida recently gained national attention by introducing a legislative bill to establish a pedigree for each drug sold in the State. Although this bill has not yet become law, its intention is to verify authenticity and reduce the risk of counterfeit items entering the supply chain. Specifically, the bill calls for the following pedigree information to accompany each drug through all steps of the supply chain:                Drug name,        Dosage,        Container size,        Number of containers,        Drug lots or control numbers,        Business name and address of all parties to each prior transaction, starting with the manufacturer, and        The date of each previous transaction.        
Other countries have also moved forward with pedigree regulations. Most notably the Italian government, with financial support from the European Union, began to enforce the track and trace of pharmaceuticals with the Bollini Law in 2000. This law requires the use of a special sticker containing a serial number and a trace of all parties within the supply chain. However, this has created great difficulty for manufacturers and distributors. As a result, the full implementation of the law will not take place until June 2004 because of a lack of technology to handle the task of recording and archiving the serial numbers. An additional problem is that the design specifications of the database structure needed to support track and trace, have still not yet been determined.
Although the physical form of goods changes throughout manufacturing and distribution, a link still exists for all raw materials and the work processes used to produce the finished goods. This type of link demonstrates inheritance of specific attributes. Each medicine used by the patient has a specific lot number and expiration date printed on the container. The drug is shipped on a identifiable truck, at a particular temperature for a specific duration. The effectiveness of the medicine ultimately depends on the quality of the manufacturing process and the environmental conditions of transport and storage. These are all inherited attributes that form the pedigree.
Organizing the large number of informational links for all pharmaceutical product items in the supply chain becomes complex. To simplify product data management, two additional concepts are required. These are data aggregation and data inheritance.
Data inheritance is the history of the parent data. It is the logical equivalent of item aggregation or assembly. By viewing data within a supply chain as a series of parent-child relationships, track and trace becomes possible. To reconstruct the history of an item, each change in form must transfer from parent to child.
Data aggregation joins linked or like data together to reduce the number of readings at critical points within the supply chain, and thus making the capture of informational links needed for large-scale drug authentication, and track and trace, more feasible. If data aggregation were not possible, the identifiers for each product on the pallet would need to be read, resulting in a number of additional reads, especially when dealing with pallet level shipments.
To overcome the problems associated with the generation of a huge amount of product data, there is considerable interest in expanding or replacing the Universal Product Code (UPC) now in use for barcodes. In North America a product is typically identified by a 12-digit Universal Product Code (UPC), and in Europe and other regions by a 13-digit European Article Number (EAN) which are machine-readable product codes in the form of a printed 2D bar code. The Uniform Code Council (UCC) and EAN define and administer the UPC and related codes as subsets of the 14-digit Global Trade Item Number (GTIN).
The Auto-ID Center has defined a standard for mapping of the GTIN into the 96-bit Electronic Product Code (EPC) to help ensure compatibility between the EPC and current practices. The MIT Auto-ID Center has developed a standard for a 96-bit Electronic Product Code (EPC), coupled with an Internet-based Object Naming Service (ONS) and a Product Markup Language (PML). Once an EPC is scanned, it is used to look up, via the ONS, matching product information encoded in PML. The EPC consists of an 8-bit header, a 28-bit object class, and a 36-bit serial number. Although EPCs can be encoded in many physical forms, and carried over a range of interfaces, the Auto-ID Center strongly advocate the benefits of using low cost passive RFID tags to carry EPCs for individual item identification.
The appeal of an Auto-ID solution lies in the ability to use the EPC as a pointer to look up information about a drug that is contained in a remote database. The EPC acts as a persistent link to verify if the item has been legitimately obtained. This will act as a strong deterrent for fraud at many points along the supply chain. If and when a customer decides to return an item, or if there is a suspected problem with the contents, then there is a persistent link to information to validate product details. It prevents illegal returns, protects customers in the event of medical problems resulting from product use—or misuse—and it makes it possible to track customers and customized products that might be used by the wrong person and resulting in medical problems. Inventory control and reordering functions will be far more reliable.
The item's EPC serves as a key into a distributed PML database which records the characteristics of the item and its evolving history as it proceeds through the pharmaceutical supply chain. PML servers, located at each node of the supply chain, and secure Internet based communication combine to provide the primary handling structure and means. Tracking of higher level units (e.g. pallet or shipping company, dispatch/order number and transport route) in the supply chain is implicit. Readers installed at all transit entry and exit points can be used to automatically track movement and update dispatch logs at all points in the supply chain. Either the Internet or dedicated computer networks can provide the communication links.
The hardware components for an Auto-ID solution are technologically feasible with significant development having taken place during the past several years. A number of vendors are capable of producing key infrastructure components to meet the specific requirements of the pharmaceutical industry.
Besides the proposed applications in improving track and trace, and drug authentication, Auto-ID infrastructure also serves as the foundation for future applications of importance to the health care industry. For example, the Human Genome Project creates greater opportunities for engineering drugs to treat small groups of individuals that suffer from specific illnesses. These ‘designer drugs’ will be manufactured in small lot sizes on a make to order basis. In this environment, logistics and coordination takes on a new form as thousands of biotechnology drugs flood the pharmaceutical supply chain. Delivery of these new drugs to the right group of people presents a challenge that the current logistical system may not handle effectively.
However, this new capability does have drawbacks: The task of handling streaming information for the estimated 6 billion individual pharmaceutical items sold in the United States last year alone, taxes the capacity of the Internet or dedicated computer networks—even when the data aggregation and inheritance concepts are used. An additional complexity is that the Auto-ID approach would have to be fine-tuned in terms of information synchronisation among many different supply chain partners to ensure a high level of reliability for pedigree and drug authentication information. If a single supply chain partner did not properly handle information, pedigrees might show gaps that would raise counterfeit questions. The Auto-ID approach also assumes different entities within the pharmaceutical supply chain can achieve a common level of cooperation in supporting this information infrastructure.
A further difficulty to overcome is that the Auto-ID approach assumes that all drug manufacturers, carriers, wholesalers and pharmacies have the necessary hardware and computing ability to read and process EPC information. It is therefore unrealistic to believe that this capability will occur immediately.
Thus, it is likely that the pharmaceutical industry will continue to adopt an evolutionary approach to the standardisation of unique item identification technology throughout the manufacturing and supply chains. It is also likely that a range of technologies will need to be adopted and integrated to introduce incremental improvements in security and supply chain efficiency.
Currently two main types of technologies offering alternative methods of unique product item identification, such as EPCs, namely:                2D optical barcodes, and        Radio Frequency Identification tags (RFID).        
A 2D optical barcode consists of a composite image that can store about 2,000 bytes of data along two dimensions. The Uniform Code Council and European Article Numbering (EAN) International have standardized a range of 2D barcodes, all with a significantly larger data capacity than the existing EPC.
2D optical barcodes are now widely used in the global pharmaceutical industry. In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has mandated their use on all pharmaceutical goods manufactured within its jurisdiction to identify product lines. The main advantage driving their acceptance is that they are inexpensive to produce.
The main disadvantage of 2D optical barcodes is that they are often difficult to read due to label damage and a direct ‘line-of-sight’ is needed for scanning. In addition to this, 2-D optical barcodes are unsightly and therefore detrimental to the packaging of the product. This problem is exacerbated in the case of pharmaceuticals, which generally use small packaging, but require a relatively large bar-code which can therefore obscure a substantial part of the packaging.
An RFID tag is a technology that incorporates the use of electromagnetic or electrostatic coupling to uniquely identify an object. It consists of three parts: antenna, transceiver, and transponder.
In the case of Pharmaceuticals RFID tags provide unique product item identification encoded in the form of an EPC. The pharmaceutical industry recognizes the many advantages of introducing accurate and reliable unique item identification technology. The expected advantages include:                Dramatically eliminate inventory loss and write-offs due to ‘shrinkage’,        Improve productivity in dispatch and receiving of goods,        Significantly reduce the time required to identify the location of products for recall if required,        Provide an efficient basis for satisfying regulatory requirements,        Increase assurance of shipment accuracy, and therefore reduce the number of customer complaints, and        Provide a lot and expiration date tracking capability.        
RFID tracking could be automated to help improve the integrity of the pharmaceutical supply chain. By identifying and tracking products in the supply chain, companies can maintain a much tighter control over legitimate shipments, and ensure that they are not hijacked or stolen. This can prevent products from falling into the hands of counterfeiters, who could dilute or alter the drugs, and then distribute them to unsuspecting pharmacies and customers. For this reason, many major pharmaceutical companies, such as Johnson & Johnson and Eli Lilly and Company, are now exploring the possibility of using RFID tags on all drug shipments.
There are also regulatory requirements driving the adoption of RFID technologies. The FDA plays a lead role in providing a forum and guidance for new technology adoption and is actively encouraging the implementation of ways to authenticate prescription drugs through the supply chain to ensure compliance and patient safety. Working with pharmaceutical companies and vendors of anti-counterfeit security systems, the FDA identifies technologies that are able to protect the industry against various threats to customers and brand protection. Although it does not specify which technologies are able to respond to the identified threats, it does specify the security features that need to be employed on the product packaging and shipping materials. The Healthcare Distribution Management Association (HDMA) has also recommended that pharmaceutical manufacturers and wholesalers use product identifiers on cases by 2005, and that RFID tags at item level should be deployed by 2007.
Recently, the FDA has published a proposed rule referred to as ‘Bar Code Label Requirements for Human Drug Products and Blood FDA Proposed Rule (14 Mar. 2003). Bar Code Label Requirements for Human Drug Products and Blood, Federal Register (Vol. 68, No. 50) pp. 12499-12534. The proposed rule will require pharmaceutical companies to identify each drug, and dosage using linear barcodes. The need to include lot number and expiration dates are still under consideration. Although the benefits of using unique item identification are now being considered, this is not likely for some time as at present there are no suitable solutions available.
However, in addition to the forecast benefits and regulatory pressures for RFID use, there are also some disadvantages that make RFID tags unsuitable for some pharmaceutical products.
First, RFID tags are costly to produce. The current cost of producing an RFID is around 30-50 cents. While this cost can be significantly reduced once high production volumes and wide acceptance have been achieved, it is unlikely that the cost will fall below 5 cents per RFID tag in the foreseeable future. There are also some additional costs associated with integrating the RFID tags into packaging and labeling.
A further problem is that the presence of metals, liquids and other electromagnetic frequency (EMF) signals can interfere with RFID tag scanners, and thus seriously jeopardize the reliability and integrity of the RFID system. In the pharmaceutical industry, many radiopaque materials are used in both the content and containers of goods. To overcome this problem for RFID systems, it is necessary to split individual boxes of goods so that they can be conveyed past RFID tag readers, making dock-to-dock transfers more time-consuming. These restrictions will also apply at item level at the point-of-sale (POS). This alone would make them unsuitable for large-scale deployment.
A third disadvantage of RFID tags concerns customer privacy. If, for example, a terminally ill cancer patient collected their RFID tagged morphine sulphate prescription, then it might be possible for a person to illegally use a scanning device to detect the nature of the contents by reading an RFID tag without the knowledge of the owner. Knowing the contents, that person may then decide to steal the goods. However, the risk can be reduced by ensuring that once an item has gone to a customer, access to information over the network is then dynamically altered and secured to protect personal information or product details. This could be done using virtual customer records that comply with emerging standards for managing and securing patient information folders (PIFs) for the healthcare system.
Collectively, these disadvantages mean that it is unlikely that RFID tags will ever become suitable for all pharmaceutical or therapeutic items, and as such will only ever be able to be deployed as an alternative technology and adopted alongside some other form of product identification system.
Surface Coding Background
The Netpage surface coding consists of a dense planar tiling of tags. Each tag encodes its own location in the plane. Each tag also encodes, in conjunction with adjacent tags, an identifier of the region containing the tag. This region ID is unique among all regions. In the Netpage system the region typically corresponds to the entire extent of the tagged surface, such as one side of a sheet of paper.
The surface coding is designed so that an acquisition field of view large enough to guarantee acquisition of an entire tag is large enough to guarantee acquisition of the ID of the region containing the tag. Acquisition of the tag itself guarantees acquisition of the tag's two-dimensional position within the region, as well as other tag-specific data. The surface coding therefore allows a sensing device to acquire a region ID and a tag position during a purely local interaction with a coded surface, e.g. during a “click” or tap on a coded surface with a pen.
The use of netpage surface coding is described in more detail in the following copending patent applications, U.S. Ser. No. 10/815,647, entitled “Obtaining Product Assistance” filed on 2nd Apr. 2004; and U.S. Ser. No. 10/815,609, entitled “Laser Scanner Device for Printed Product Identification Cod” filed on 2nd Apr. 2004.
Cryptography Background
Cryptography is used to protect sensitive information, both in storage and in transit, and to authenticate parties to a transaction. There are two classes of cryptography in widespread use: secret-key cryptography and public-key cryptography.
Secret-key cryptography, also referred to as symmetric cryptography, uses the same key to encrypt and decrypt a message. Two parties wishing to exchange messages must first arrange to securely exchange the secret key.
Public-key cryptography, also referred to as asymmetric cryptography, uses two encryption keys. The two keys are mathematically related in such a way that any message encrypted using one key can only be decrypted using the other key. One of these keys is then published, while the other is kept private. They are referred to as the public and private key respectively. The public key is used to encrypt any message intended for the holder of the private key. Once encrypted using the public key, a message can only be decrypted using the private key. Thus two parties can securely exchange messages without first having to exchange a secret key. To ensure that the private key is secure, it is normal for the holder of the private key to generate the public-private key pair.
Public-key cryptography can be used to create a digital signature. If the holder of the private key creates a known hash of a message and then encrypts the hash using the private key, then anyone can verify that the encrypted hash constitutes the “signature” of the holder of the private key with respect to that particular message, simply by decrypting the encrypted hash using the public key and verifying the hash against the message. If the signature is appended to the message, then the recipient of the message can verify both that the message is genuine and that it has not been altered in transit.
Secret-key can also be used to create a digital signature, but has the disadvantage that signature verification can also be performed by a party privy to the secret key.
To make public-key cryptography work, there has to be a way to distribute public keys which prevents impersonation. This is normally done using certificates and certificate authorities. A certificate authority is a trusted third party which authenticates the association between a public key and a person's or other entity's identity. The certificate authority verifies the identity by examining identity documents etc., and then creates and signs a digital certificate containing the identity details and public key. Anyone who trusts the certificate authority can use the public key in the certificate with a high degree of certainty that it is genuine. They just have to verify that the certificate has indeed been signed by the certificate authority, whose public key is well-known.
To achieve comparable security to secret-key cryptography, public-key cryptography utilises key lengths an order of magnitude larger, i.e. a few thousand bits compared with a few hundred bits.
Schneier B. (Applied Cryptography, Second Edition, John Wiley & Sons 1996) provides a detailed discussion of cryptographic techniques.